Seeking the Unconventional in Forging Histories of Capitalism

May 9-10, 2019

Organizer

Seeking the Unconventional in Forging Histories of Capitalism

This one-day workshop, which will be coordinated by the Business History Initiative at Harvard Business School, brings together scholars in the fields of history, economics, and management to explore the unconventional as it relates to researching and writing about entrepreneurship and business. The goal is to critically assess frameworks and approaches that animate scholarship in business history, the history of capitalism, and the comparative study of markets and institutions both past and present. There will be a special session on HBS’s large Creating Emerging Markets oral history project. We envision three complementary areas of discussion, i.e. unconventional techniques, unconventional sources, and unconventional capitalisms.

Such an endeavor is especially appropriate given the growing influence of new markets around the world. Stories of industrial and consumer capitalism have been largely told from the Euro-American perspective without understanding what other values, parameters, and historical conditions beyond political economy have shaped business in the twenty-first century. In order to explain the benefits and limits of the global capitalist experience, this workshop attempts to move beyond traditional histories that focus on the production of commodities, mechanics of trade, and firm histories. Instead, this workshop aims to harness the unconventional in how we frame our research questions, analyze sources, and cast our narratives. The workshop will especially encourage participants to explore themes such as comparative ethics across mature and emerging capitalist societies, the impact of technological development on the range of sources and techniques available for studying business, the limits of global histories of capitalism, and the construction of essentialist knowledge about business groups, communities, and nationalities.